“I said, why don’t we just snatch one of them? Keep him here for a while,” Harold said, waving one of his hamlike hands around as if in explanation. “We wouldn’t hurt him. Just keep him here awhile.” He might have been speaking of a pet rabbit, or a turtle.
Clarence studied the earnest features of his large confederate for several moments, wondering when he would learn not to prejudge people. It was a dangerous habit for a professional con man to get into. Maybe he had been in England too long; the damp weather, possibly, was beginning to warp his brain.
“Are you suggesting,” he said slowly, “that we hold one of those poor old men for ransom? That’s against the law, you know.”
Harold waved this argument away as being specious.
“What ain’t?” he demanded. “Sure we hold him for ransom; that gives us a good excuse to have him here, don’t you see? They got lots of loot, it says in the papers, and I could sure use some. You got all the dough we got between us, but I’m broke. What do you say, Clare? It’s a good idea, ain’t it? We’d split the dough right down the line. What do you say? Huh?”
Clarence Wellington Alexander scratched his chin; it was the same sort of delaying come-on he used when people appeared eager to buy small amounts of oil-well stock, rather than the large, economy-sized blocks he preferred to sell.
“I don’t know—”
“Sure it’s a good idea!” Harold said fiercely. It was not often that ideas struck him, but he knew a good one when it did, and he hated to see it abandoned. “Look, Clare — I’ll even do most of the work. You want one of them old men here, how do you expect to get him to come? Just by askin’? Maybe he says no. Maybe he don’t like it on a farm; it took me a while, and I still ain’t sure. I tell you, snatchin’ one of them is the only way! I could pick him up at the airport when they come in, I bet! Bring him right out here. No sweat!” His mind, now as firmly in the saddle as it ever got, was charging along in all directions.
“Well, possibly—”
“No possibly. It’s a sure thing.” It was said with cold finality. It was rare, indeed, that Harold found himself this forceful with Clarence — without, that is, having his head handed to him verbally. It was an intoxicating feeling. “And it was lucky you went shoppin’ yesterday; we got enough food in the joint to last weeks.” He frowned as a snag in his scheme suddenly appeared. “There’s one thing, though. What about that old bag who comes in to do the cleanin’?”
“Mrs. Southington?” Clarence shook his head at the tragedy that besets even the best of us in this cruel world. “Poor soul, she’s pretty sick. She came down with shrinking edema, I just learned yesterday. She won’t be able to come in for a week or so.”
“See?” Harold came as close to crowing as his gravel voice would allow. It was almost as if the gods were blessing the venture. “It all works out! I tell you, Clare, it’s a natural!” He could not imagine how any rational person could doubt the rightness of the idea, and therefore moved on to the next point, hoping that sheer momentum would bring Clare into camp. “Which one of them are we goin’ to snatch, Clare?”
“Which one would you prefer for company?” Clarence asked, now feeling generous.
Harold was delighted with himself; his ploy had worked. He closed his eyes and tried to recall the newspaper article with its accompanying photograph. When he finally brought it into focus, he examined it carefully. He nodded.
“The fat guy, I think,” he said, and opened his eyes, blinking. “Yeah. He looks like the happiest one, like he’d be the most fun. And also, them fat guys can’t run so fast, if he gets any funny ideas.” He suddenly grinned; it looked as if someone had opened a new box of pipless dice. “Hey! We’re really goin’ to do it, Clare?”
“Well,” Clarence said, finally allowing himself to be sold, “all right. If you think you can snatch him at the airport and bring him back here without any fuss” — Harold snorted at the thought of any old man, or any ten of them together, giving him any trouble — “and,” Clarence added, “without half of the airport seeing you and following you.” He studied Harold. “Can you do it?”
“Sure!” Harold said expansively, and then paused. Faced with the need to consider the minute details, his mind stumbled to its normal halt. The basic idea was sound, he was convinced, but unfortunately, that was as far as he had gone.
Clarence, watching the uncertainty take over from the assured on Harold’s face, took pity on the big man.
“You know,” he said pensively, as if the idea had just occurred to him and had not been conceived hours before, “I’ll bet if I were to be at the airport, too, and somehow managed to separate the fat man from the other two, all you would have to do would be to take charge of him, get him into the car, and be on your way.”
“Yeah!” Harold said, overwhelmed by the profundity of Clarence’s solution. He had been sure that once Clarence had accepted the basic premise, he would contribute his share to the success of the venture. A rift, though, appeared in the lute. “Only how you goin’ to get the fat man alone by hisself?”
“I’ll think of something,” Clarence promised, and went back to his original idea. “When you have him in the car, tell him you were sent to pick him up by some company — say a television company — to take him someplace for an interview. He’ll go quietly enough. Tell him his two friends will meet him later.” He nodded in satisfaction as the final pieces fell into place. “Yes, that should do it nicely. Tell him his friends will meet him at his club, that Mystery Writers thing the paper mentioned. String the story out as long as he isn’t suspicious, but if he starts to get the idea that something isn’t kosher in Kankakee, that he’s being snatched—”
“Yeah? What then, Clare?”
Clarence eyed the large man coldly. “Then you just have to make sure he stays quiet the rest of the way.”
“Oh. Sure.” Harold nodded automatically, and then checked himself. “But I ain’t goin’ to hurt him, am I, Clare? Because I don’t really want to hurt him, Clare.”
“Nobody is going to hurt anyone,” Clarence said soothingly. “We’re just going to have a guest for a few days. A paying guest,” he added significantly, and smiled.
“A what?” Harold pondered. Suddenly his dazzling smile appeared, to be followed by what would have been an anguished growl from a dog suffering a bone in its throat, but with Harold was a guffaw. “A payin’ guest, huh, Clare? Hey, that’s good.”
“Yes,” Clarence said, and glanced at his watch. “And now, if you’ll get the car out, we’ll be on our way. Luckily, between here and the airport is largely open country; you won’t have to put up with city traffic.” Or too many curious people, he thought, who might wonder at seeing a fat man struggling with a giant in what even the Japanese would have called a small car. “You drop me at the nearest telephone booth to the arrival building,” he continued, “and then go around to where they come out of customs. I’ll see to it that the fat one is alone when he comes through. You pick him up and bring him back here and entertain him until I come back.”
“You ain’t comin’ with us, Clare?”
“No. I’ll go into town from the airport and take a train from there and a taxi from the station to come home when I’m through. Besides, three’s a crowd — “In their small English car two would have been a crowd. “And I have other things to do.”
“Like what, Clare? Huh?” Harold’s brow was furrowed, his tone plaintive. “You ought to tell me what you’re goin’ to do, Clare. After all, snatchin’ the old man was my idea in the first place, you want to remember.”